Social media platforms allow their users to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations. These days, creating a social media presence for your business is practically required to reach new and existing customers where they already are. Understanding the most common social media terms is crucial!
Ad targeting - The process of selecting a specific audience who will see your ad. You can target based on demographic information, like age, gender, location, and interests.
Application or app - Software that you download and install to perform a basic task or function on your computer or mobile device.
- Example: You use Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn through the browser on your computer, but you install the Facebook App, Instagram App, or LinkedIn App on your phone.
Archive - Outdated content from a social media platform, webpage, or blog, that's indexed and often organized by category or date, to save "as-is" for future reference.
- Example: Federal, state, and municipal governments have open meeting, public records, and ethics laws that require agencies to archive their social media activity without alteration. Different industries, like financial services, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, can also have archiving requirements.
Audience - The group of specific people who actively view and engage with your content on social media. Your audience can see your posts because they actively follow your social profile, or you can target your audience through advertising based on the demographics that make the most sense for your organization.
Blog - A website where the writer can share personal, diary-style, entries relevant to their life and times, or share knowledge and expertise that's relevant for their readers. Chronologically, the newest posts are always at the top, while older posts fall to the bottom, and may also be archived.
- Example: The Constant Contact Blog offers weekly post content for our customers on a variety of topics relevant to email, event, and social media marketing, contact management, ecommerce, advertising, and building a web presence.
Comment - Messages that people leave in response to a post made on social media.
Connections - People that follow a profile on LinkedIn.
Demographics - The age, location, and gender statistics, and share interest information that are common to an audience. Knowing the demographics of your audience helps you write better post content and created targeted ads to reach the right people with your message.
Direct message - (DM) Social media platforms provide a way for their users to communicate privately by sending messages through a private chat or inbox. It's common to see "DM me" on a public post to let the commenter know you want to move to a private channel.
Emoji - A standard set of pictorial representations of objects, emotions, and actions, that everyone can universally understand. The name "emoji" literally means "a picture character." These are used in posts on social media to add humor or give a better idea of the tone of a post.
Engagement rate by impressions - (ER Impressions) The measure of how well your social post performs relative to the number of times it's been presented to social media users. This is calculated by dividing the the total number of impressions for a post by your total number of engagements, and multiplying the results by 100.
Engagement rate by post - (ER Post) The measure of how well your social post performs relative to the total number of followers you have. This is calculated by dividing the total number of engagements for a post by your total followers, and then multiplying the result by 100.
- The ER Post can be found in the List View on the Campaigns tab for each individual Social Post.
Engagement rate by reach - (ERR) The measure of how well your social post performs relative to the number of people that interacted with it. This is calculated by dividing the total number of engagements for a post by the reach per post, and then multiplying the result by 100.
Facebook - A social networking website where users create their own profile, add friends or fans, and share content with them.
Facebook Business Page - A profile created on Facebook that acts as the official page for an organization, a brand, a charity or cause, or celebrities that want to keep their personal and public lives separated.
- The Constant Contact Facebook Business Page is used to engage with customers and share marketing tips, best practices, and customer success stories.
Facebook Personal Profile - A profile created on Facebook for individual to share information about themselves and connect with friends who are also using Facebook.
Fan - People that like a Facebook Business Page.
Feed or newsfeed - The place to view the posts that are created and shared by the people, groups, or pages you follow on social media. The feed also includes ads from organizations that you may not be actively engaged with. Instagram, and LinkedIn refer to it as a feed, while Facebook uses "news feed."
Follower - Instagram users tap the Follow button on the profile of another Instagram user when they want to receive their tweets/posts in their own feed.
Friend - People that follow a personal profile on Facebook.
Handle - The username used on a social media platform, usually preceded by an @ symbol. It makes it easy for people to tag your organization in a post without having to visit your specific social media profile.
- Constant Contact uses @constantcontact across multiple social media platforms.
Hashtag (#)- A hashtag is used to add keywords or topics to a post on social media to help you relate your post to a larger discussion. Anyone who searches for a specific hashtag sees a list of all the posts that include the hashtag - usually the most popular posts appear at the top of the list. You can create a hashtag that is unique to your organization, or use hashtags related to current events, social movements, and pop culture.
- Example: Constant Contact uses #ctctlife specifically for employees to share experiences they are having while working.
Impressions - The number of times social media users are presented with your post or ad.
Instagram - A social media platform for sharing photos and videos as posts. Instagram offers many fun filters to apply to your photos before posting.
- Example: The Constant Contact Instagram page has content to help inspire our customers through customers success stories and live, virtual events.
Like - Social media users can like a post by clicking the thumbs up symbol (Facebook or LinkedIn), or the heart symbol (Instagram). Likes are a way for users to acknowledge that they read your post without having to leave a comment. Both Facebook and LinkedIn also give the option to give more nuanced feedback on your post with additional symbols.
Link or hyperlink (also see URL) - Clickable text that brings you to another web page or document when you click on it. On a regular webpage, the text of the link doesn't need to match the URL that it is pointing to, but in a social media post, links are either the URL or a shortened URL for the new webpage.
LinkedIn - A social networking site designed specifically for the business community to connect with other business professionals. Create a business profile to let other LinkedIn users know who you are and what you do.
LinkedIn Company Page - A profile created on LinkedIn that acts as the official page for an organization, a brand, a charity or cause.
- Example: The Constant Contact LinkedIn Page is used to share industry knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and connect with employees.
Organic post - Posts that created and shared without any sort of payment involved, and rely on a poster's existing audience to comment, like, or share them. Ads can look like regular posts, but they target a specific audience through a paid service.
Pinterest - A social platform where members share and categorize images. "Pinning" an image or video to a "board" allows you to keep track of items you like. Create boards to collect items by subject or areas of interest. Boards can be public, and other Pinterest members can see your items, or private, and you decide who sees your board.
Post (also see tweet) - Content shared on social media through a user's profile. It can be as simple as a blurb of text, but can also include images, videos, and links to other content. Other users of the social network can like, comment, and share the post.
Profile picture - A picture uploaded to your social media profile to indicate who you are. Sometimes your profile picture is used without your name to show you posted a comment. Depending on the social media platform, you'll decide what kind of image to use for your Profile Picture.
- Example: Constant Contact uses our official logo as the profile picture across all of our social media profiles for easy recognition.
Reach - The total number of unique people who have seen your post, including your immediate audience and anyone they've shared it with.
Reaction - The thumbs up, hearts, hugging faces, sad faces, angry faces, crying faces, or laughing faces given by the people reading your post on Facebook.
Replies - Messages left in response to comments left on a social media post.
RSS feed - (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
Saves - Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn users can save posts to easily find them again later.
Shares - Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn users can share posts with people in their network.
Social media - Collectively it's all the platforms (blogs, wikis, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) that allow users to connect with other users online. Content is published by one user and engaged with by other users in the form of impressions, likes, and comments.
Social media marketing - Advertising products, services, and causes to a targeted audience on social media networks. Marketing can be done through organic posts or paid advertisements. Organizations have the added benefit of being able to start a conversation with post, or be part of a conversation when users comment on a post.
Social networking - The act of sharing content and engaging with others online for a social or business purpose.
Subscriber - This is similar to a follower, except that it applies to YouTube and Facebook. On YouTube, users click the Subscribe button for a channel to see that channel's videos in their feed. In addition, users can subscribe to a Facebook page in order to see public updates without actually becoming Facebook "friends" with the owner of the page.
Tag or label - Using keywords, hashtags, or social media names to let a person, subject, or idea know that you're talking about them, with them, or to them. If you want your post to show up on another user's feed, you write their social media name with an @ symbol ahead of it so they become "tagged." If you're using hashtags, incorporate the hashtag in your post.
Thread - A series of comments and replies related to an individual post on social media.
Timeline - A list of posts that you created and shared on social media. Generally your timeline is visible from your home profile page and can be accessed by clicking your profile picture, wherever you see it in.
URL (also see link) - (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of for a webpage (also called a web address). You can find the URL of a web page at the top of your browser. URLs can be shared in social media posts on Facebook, and LinkedIn, but not on Instagram.
URL shortener - A tool that truncates a URL to fewer characters. By sharing a shortened URL you have more room for other content, like text and hashtags.
Yelp - A social media site where businesses are reviewed and rated on a 1-5 star system by people (called Yelpers). Users can upload images to add to their review, and rate other reviews in terms of their helpfulness. Businesses can claim their page to add more detailed information, and monitor and respond to reviews.
YouTube - A social media platform for sharing and viewing video content. You can create a "channel" to share your videos publicly or privately. You can also create an account to track the videos you watch, "subscribe" to YouTube channels that interest you, and leave likes and comments on individual videos.
- Example: The Constant Contact YouTube channel has playlists to share webinars and advice, how-to tutorials, customer testimonials, and our commercials.
